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This dissertation reinterprets John Wesley's (1703-1791) doctrine of sin with special reference to the place of faithlessness. The argument of this dissertation is John Wesley provides a mode of framing hamartiology around the everyday experience of unbelief, or, in Wesley's idiom, 'practical atheism.' That is, the ordinary condition of humanity is one where God seems comfortably absent from the heart and mind. It is Wesley's recognition of the insolubility of unbelief as the condition of everyday life that best describes his doctrine of sin. To demonstrate this the argument follows Wesley in the order of experience. Since the condition of one's being in the world is one of unbelief, then awareness of sin remains conditional upon the illumination (witness) of the Holy Spirit (Ch. 2). Sin is only known within the movements of salvation. The next two chapters unpack how unbelief factors into Wesley's wider account of the doctrine of original sin pertaining to the primal sin's origin and its effects (Chs. 3-4). Then this thesis turns to role of demonology and spiritual combat in how Wesley considers the condition of unbelief (Ch. 5). Chapters three to five demonstrate the negative side of one's lifeworld resultant from the new birth and the witness of the Holy Spirit. The final chapter explores the place of unbelief from within the contours of the holy life in conversation with Wesley's comments on 'heaviness,' 'darkness,' and 'the wilderness state,' addressing themes like doubt, temptation, and despair(Ch. 6). This interpretation of Wesley's doctrine of sin seeks to provide a thicker account of the inner life of the sanctified person as grounded within the life of the community, where the wilderness state is admitted, but not before carefully differentiating between what follows simply from one's creaturely finitude and what follows from the consequences of the Fall.

This work describes the characterization of the chemical properties of intermediates in furan metabolism using techniques derived from the fields of analytical and physical chemistry, toxicology, and cancer biology.

The notions of eco-localism and sustainable intensification have emerged as approaches for sustainable food and sustainable agriculture in the sustainability literature. With regard to these two notions, a lot of the focus in the literature has been on the farm or the dairy but this study seeks to explore their applicability to the study of the production, distribution and consumption of cheese, moving beyond the farm gate. This study examines the discourses of sustainability within three different cheese actor-networks including the degree to which various discourses of sustainability are embedded in the actual practices and products produced. This interdisciplinary study also investigates the sustainability issues and potential solutions for achieving sustainability as well as providing a system development system that has a potential for making actor-network theory (ANT) more practical. Cheese is thought to be notoriously unsustainable, as on average 10 litres of milk is needed to make just 1kg of hard cheese and there are concerns over the amounts of methane and other greenhouse gas emissions as well as environmental waste across the network. Cheese is important for sustaining rural livelihoods and important for employment, especially in the context of concerns over milk prices, falling farm incomes and reductions in dairy farming. Many dairy farmers are therefore looking to diversify and add value to their milk production, by turning to cheesemaking. The Specialist Cheesemakers Association (SCA) has recorded an increase in both enquiries from dairy farmers and new members joining (Specialist Cheese makers Association, 2015). This study explores the adoption of two approaches that can combine as a set method to explore sustainability. These two approaches are Actor Network Theory (ANT) and the computer science system development methodology, i*. ANT is used in combination with i* to develop a methodological framework. This research applies this framework to eco-localist and sustainably intensified cheese networks from production to consumption, from farm-to-fork. A collection of semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and ethnographic observations were used to assemble information on sustainability challenges within milk production, cheesemaking, distribution and sales. This research produced a sustainability framework and determined that ‘sustainable cheese’ is not a fictitious agri-food but it is hard to achieve ‘sustainability’ as there is no finite end. The study also identified sustainability problems for eco-localist and sustainably intensive cheese actor-networks and explored potential ways to demonstrably improve the sustainability of cheese.

The past fifty years have seen increasingly rapid advances in urbanization and development in Saudi Arabia. Medina is a Saudi city; it is the second most significant holy place after Mecca for all Muslims worldwide because it encompasses the Prophet’s Mosque and the grave of the prophet of Islam, Mohammed. The central research aim of the thesis is to examine whether that redevelopment that has taken place in Medina between the 1970s to 2000s should be viewed as gentrification. The central zone of Medina was identified as a case study for this research. Qualitative mixed-methods research involving structured interviews and content analysis of archival data were used to investigate redevelopments in the central zone of Medina. A semi-structured interview was conducted with elite interviewees - officials and developers - and the non-elite, who are the displaced residents of the central zone of Medina. The main findings of this study show that what has happened in central zone of Medina since the 1970s to the 2000s, when the redevelopment project was completed, constitutes new build gentrification. New build gentrification in the central zone of Medina is oriented towards tourism, as led by individual investors and real state dealers in the 1970s and 1980s and by the central state in the 1990s and 2000s. It was also shown that the touristic gentrification in new build form, which is also taking place in central Medina, has resulted in the full impact of displacement. This result has particular significance with respect to the global debates regarding gentrification research, in that gentrification in the Global South, including the Middle East, occurred simultaneously with that of the Global North. The findings and contributions of this thesis show that gentrified central Medina is a new story of gentrification coming from a Middle Eastern Islamic city in Global South, as different than Global north context due to a number of issues such as being the fastest-growing urbanization in the Global South, the type of political systems, decision-making mechanisms in governmental bodies, and the cultural and social structures of communities.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation plus enhancement of forest carbon stock (REDD+) was designed and negotiated at the post-Kyoto climate conventions as an efficient and cost-effective climate change mitigation policy. The primary focus is to introduce incentive-based forest conservation initiatives for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation in forest-rich countries in order to achieve ‘win-win’ conservation and development objectives. Within the REDD+ governance framework, carbon is to be captured, commodified, measured, and traded on the market by a diverse set of actors under various bilateral and multilateral arrangements. This thesis contributes to the environmental governance literature by making complexities embedded in REDD+ design and implementation legible. This is achieved by drawing on critical institutionalism theory and geographical concept of place to examine how place-based values, motivations, emotions and institutional bricolage practices are shaping REDD+ implementation and forest governance in Cross River State, Nigeria. It also contributes to the debates about mainstream institutionalists’ assumptions that human behaviour is rational, self-seeking and so collective action can be influenced by crafting institutions in order to direct policy outcomes. Multi-method approach to data collection and analysis consisting of interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, manual coding, social network analysis, and Q-methodology were used for the study. Results show that the REDD+ process in Nigeria is characterised by unequal power relationships among the stakeholders which is causing legitimacy, equity and justice concerns. It was discovered that the forest communities in the study areas are complex entities that are responding to REDD+ and other bureaucratic forest related policies such as the proposed superhighway project differently through institutional bricolage practices. It is argued that applying uniform forest governance policies for all the communities would continue to produce unexpected outcomes in the study areas. This is because the communities have different motivations for collective action. Such motivations consist of an intricate blend of economic, emotional and moral rationalities and values which are embedded in communities’ distinct histories and social interactions. It is suggested that institutions of forest governance should be place-based and could be pieced together through formal and informal bricolage practices rather than introduced externally. This approach is particularly relevant for development interventions involving communities that still hold intrinsic motivations for environmental conservation.

Resilience has become a mainstay of climate change literature however it has long been interpreted to strengthen, support and perpetuate business as usual practices and beliefs; bouncing back to ‘normal’. Moreover climate change narratives largely ignore the necessary changes required of countries such as the UK. These changes are not restricted solely to transitioning to low carbon economies, transportation systems and home-life, but relate to attitudes about the land beneath out feet. In the UK focus is most frequently directed towards flooding and although this is and remains a grave concern it is not the only problem. With increasing frequency and magnitude of storms and intensifying rainfall alongside sea level rise, it is not only lowland areas being affected but cliffed coastlines subject to accelerated and augmented erosion. These effects are especially noticeable along the eastern coast of England which is composed largely of glacial moraines, clays, silts and sands. I have focused here on two cliff-top communities in North Norfolk to explore how the communities affected respond and cope, or not, with the changes. Bounce forward resilience shows its usefulness here by including these human aspects and recognising that it is not always possible to ‘bounce back’, nor should you as the ‘business as usual’ option may restrict ability to change. Through open interviews, reflective personal notebooks and interactive focus groups issues of disjuncture between control and fix-it tendencies and other social ideals, and the changes occurring are revealed. A triangular framework was employed to assess the extent of lock-in to particular practices and ways of living through open interviews, to explore participant emotional reactions using reflective personal notebooks, and finally undertaking focus groups to investigate capacity for change. Emotional dissonance is evident in witnessing the jarring disappearance of not just houses and landmarks but common understandings, and endeavours to maintain stability, continuity and reassert ‘the norm’. This research further reveals the creation of spaces of anxiety out of fear of future risk and compound effects leading to blight both economic and emotional. Thirdly capacity for change is discovered to be crucial in thinking beyond the normal historically accepted attitudes and behaviours, and depends largely on how ready people are to accept change and through social endeavours and community spirit make good a bad situation. The extant issues in North Norfolk represent a larger picture of loss and change around the world, with the possibility for survival through innovation and change.

This thesis investigates the impacts that the open air museum in Luxor may have on the residents of city. Although the open air museum project has involved a development framework for the city in different sectors and some social benefits, the implementation and the procedures that were used have largely be unsuccessful and have not met the social needs for residents, which has created tensions between the local people of the city and the Egyptian government. Further, the Egyptian revolution in 25th January in 2011 affected the process of the open air museum project which is reflected again on the residents’ way dealing with the Egyptian government in seeking to achieve their needs. The study adopts a mixed method approach qualitative and quantitative to understanding the impacts of this museum project on the social aspects of the city. The qualitative methodology was represented by semi-structured interviews to cover the many aspects of the open-air museum’s plan. The quantitative methodology was based on the secondary data and geographic information systems analyses, where 3D visualisation and visibility analysis were used to show how the face of the city changed between 2004 and 2012 through a sequence of open-air museum strategies. It can be concluded that the open air museum in Luxor has failed to achieve its aim to improve the social life of the areas surrounding the open-air museum. Therefore on balance, the construction strategies of the open-air museum have produced a negative social impact. The thesis makes a contribution to the context of the Luxor Open Air Museum, that has a firm geographic identity, through showing how this it effects the city structure and its social arena.

This thesis sets out to explore the experiences of young people living in a new settlement in rural Northamptonshire, which was constructed in part under New Labour’s Sustainable Communities Plan. Contextually, this project has been developed and carried out at a time of change in the UK. Economic downturn eventually led to recession, which slowed development on many new places. A change in UK government from Labour to a Conservative dominated coalition in 2010, also impacted on policy surrounding new developments. The young people who took part in my study were also in a unique position in the history of their development with their relationships set against the backdrop of this change but also against the changing and evolving environment in which they lived. My research focuses on young people’s intergenerational relationships, understandings and experiences of community and friendships. Over the course of approximately a year, I used ethnography and in depth interviews in order to collect data from eighteen young people and seven adults. Building on literatures of children and young people, community, intergenerational relationships and friendship, I make an original contribution to knowledge in the often-overlooked area of young people’s friendship. Exploring friendships through a wider examination of young people’s intergenerational relationships and connections to community, I focus explicitly on how friendships are shaped and what they mean to young people living in a new community, for example, the way these friendships were affected by transition, transport and lack of other young people living in the immediate locality and also the way that these friendships were developed, maintained and dissolved as a result of these issues. I also examine young people’s relationships to other people around them and to notions of community.

Gentrification has been seen to be a predominantly urban process, characterised by wholesale replacement of working class communities by a mobile middle-class population (Glass, 1964). More recently, contributions have acknowledged that gentrification is taking place further down the hierarchy of urban settlements with Neil Smith (2002) noting that gentrification is expanding both vertically, upwards and downwards through the settlement hierarchy (from cities to provincial cities, Dutton 2003; 2005 to smaller towns) and horizontally across the globe. English market towns, this thesis argues, have become part of what Hackworth and Smith (2001) term the third wave of gentrification with the state ‘entangled’ in the process of gentrification. This can be seen through the encouragement of regeneration in market towns, initiated through the 2001 Market Towns Initiative (MTI) that sought to regenerate ailing market towns within England. The service role of these rural towns has been seen as crucial to anchoring key services that service the wider rural hinterlands in which market towns serve (Powe and Shaw, 2004) The central argument of this thesis is that market towns are now at the leading edge of rural restructuring. Many types of market town gentrifier have been identified, specifically mature, ‘geriatrifiers’ who reside in the remote market towns and had past service class working lives via professional and managerial employment and secondly, professional/managerial gentrifiers, identified previously in rural villages (Phillips, 1993) who were using market towns as bases to commute and raise a family. Unlike previous narrative concerning gentrification, this middle class incursion was physically reflected through new build developments that have been targeted at market towns.