The article provides an analysis of the spatial configuration of the Hindi novel Naukar kī kamīz by Vinod Kumar Shukla (translated into English as The Servant’s Shirt). In highlighting the argumentative and structural similarities between the content of the novel and various concepts of social space and literary spatiality developed by Catherine Régulier, Henri Lefebrve, Edward Soja, Mikhail Bakhtin, and others, the article proposes to read the novel not only as a rare example of a detailed engagement with the social space of a postcolonial small town, but also as a text that provides a useful method and indeed a theory for the analysis of such a small town and its literary representation.

This paper examines how some elderly Chinese tenants in a cluster of housing schemes in the north of England differed in their perception, consciousness and management of time. It examines how there was too much or too little time for some of these tenants and how time played a part in their personal and social identification arising from their experiences of migration. Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis is intended to be a transdisciplinary theory that could be used to theorise ‘everyday life’. The writer superimposes this concept on the activity and disengagement theories of ageing to add meaning to the ethnographic data gathered and argues that ageing is not a simple matter of activity or disengagement. These Chinese elders coped with change through a flexible and ongoing process of adapting to different rhythms of life. This paper aims to contribute to the empirical understanding of ageing for a minority in Britain and to present a novel theoretical perspective on research approaches to ageing.